Afghanistan's Control and Audit Office Requires Operational and ...

APPENDIX I: SCOPE AND METHODOLOGYTo assess the capabilities and performance of the CAO in fulfilling its mandate, we reviewed relevantU.S., Afghan, and international laws, conventions, standards, and development strategies, as well asrelevant reports, guidance, and standards issued by U.S. government agencies, internationalorganizations, and the CAO. We interviewed CAO leadership, advisors and department heads, as wellas officials at the Afghan Ministry of Education and Afghan Attorney General’s Office.To identify assistance provided by the United States and other donors to strengthen the CAO’sinstitutional development, we interviewed and received documentation from officials at U.S.government agencies and international organizations, including USAID; the Government AccountabilityOffice; the World Bank; UNODC; the European Police Mission to Afghanistan; the United NationsDevelopment Program; the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Afghanistan; INTOSAI; and the AsianOrganization of Supreme Audit Institutions.To assess the effectiveness of U.S. assistance to the CAO, we used information obtained through thedocuments and interviews described above and developed conclusions based on that evidence. Afteridentifying gaps in the CAO legislative framework and operational shortcomings, we compared thosefindings with the provision of U.S. assistance to determine whether that assistance might effectivelyassist the CAO in filling those gaps and overcoming the shortcomings.This report is part of a series of SIGAR audits addressing U.S. efforts to combat corruption andstrengthen the rule of law. We conducted work in Kabul, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. fromDecember 2009 to April 2010 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.These standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidenceto provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believethe evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our auditobjectives. The audit was conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for AfghanistanReconstruction under the authority of Public Law No. 110-181, and the Inspector General Act of 1978, asamended.SIGAR Audit-10-8 Anti-Corruption/Control and Audit Office Page 20